Who Rules, Trans-Fat to Foie Gras?

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Today is the last day for legal foie gras in Chicago, but the city has more to mind than just duck and goose livers. Last week, The News Hour's Elizabeth Brackett reported on Chicago's City Council's move to ban trans-fat from the city's restaurants. This time around Alderman Edward Burke introduced legislation to force restaurants to use alternate fats in their foods: If the restaurants won't voluntarily change their policy and adopt a healthy means of preparation, then I think that it's clear that municipal government has the right to step in and legislate. Some of the restaurateurs interviewed in The News Hour segment are scrambling to figure out how they will pay for the higher costs of un-hydrogenated oil. Alderman Burke is changing his original legislation to apply to restaurants with gross revenues of over $20 million. That would eliminate all super chef and celebrity chef restaurateurs, who hold their restaurants as seperate entities which typically do not earn more than $20 million, and most independents and would hit only large chains. Restaurants that failed to remove trans-fats from their kitchens would be fined $200 to $1,000 a day. Some are complaining that the city government should not be legislating against foods. Michael Tsonton of Copperblue restaurant and head of Chicago Chefs for Choice told The Newshour: We have a right to choose what we want to sell and what we want to serve on products that are legally prepared. I mean, I'm not serving Bengal tiger in my restaurant, but if I want to serve foie gras, I should be allowed to serve foie gras. You can't legislate those choices. You know, you can legislate airbags, seatbelts, but trans-fat? It's a tricky area. It's a tricky area. Is it fair to link foie gras, which will be banned in Chicago as of today, with a kind of hydrogonated oil that is clearly dangerous to everyone's health? Foie gras isn't being banned because it is dangerous to humans, but because some believe animals are being mistreated in producing it. Trans-fats are considered unhealthy by the scientific community, and the ban is to force chain restaurants to change more swiftly to protect human health. Should a city council even spend its time debating food and food bans? The City Council could be spending its time on more pressing local issues, since the Federal Government has ample power to legislate against dangerous ingredients, but since the Federal Government isn't doing much, it is probably a good idea that a major American city start the ball rolling. Should fine dining chefs and restaurateurs support a local ban on a food product? It is arguable that because this is a question of health and the enormous cost to the tax payers of poor health, and not a question of whether they can serve a product (after all, most fine dining restaurants do not use trans fats), there is no reason not to support such a ban. Would this ban be a precedence for the City to ban other ingredients? Perhaps, but there are few ingredients that are so without merit (beyond low cost) and so dangerous to our health as trans fat. It is hard to compare trans fat and foie gras or cooking live lobster or other targets of animal rights activists. What do you think? Please let Superchefblog know by leaving a comment about this story, below. Previous articles: [Foie Gras War - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to superchefblog